


Scout's Honor

by thegraytigress



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drama, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 07:18:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1973832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegraytigress/pseuds/thegraytigress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The memories come free from the shadows, and they aren't going back. They flood him and flood him until only one thing remains. Something he promised someone a long time ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scout's Honor

**Author's Note:**

> **DISCLAIMER:** _Captain America: The First Avenger_ and _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ are the properties of Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Studios, and Marvel Studios. This work was created purely for enjoyment. No money was made, and no infringement was intended.
> 
>  **RATING:** T (for language, violence)
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is a bit of a companion piece to "Follow the Leader". You don't have to read "Follow the Leader" to follow along (ugh, that was a bad pun). Thanks for reading!
> 
> [Here's](https://ficbook.net/readfic/5114021) a translation into Russian for this story provided by the awesome pandaginger. Thanks so much!

The little apartment always smelled like sickness.  Even when Steve’s mom opened the windows during the spring and summer months to let fresh air in, it never quite warded away that scent of sweat and stale air, that tight feeling of suffering and infirmity.  It always struck Bucky because Bucky was never sick.  He had strong Irish blood in him, descended from a long line of people blessed with good health and hearty bodies.   Maybe that was why he noticed the smell so much.  He was flat out unused to it, and it always made him stop when he stepped inside that sad hole-in-the-wall of a place.  It would seep into his clothes and slip up into his nostrils and suddenly it was hard to stay put.

Steve’s mom tried her best to make the apartment a home.  But she was a frail woman, aged before her time by the loss of her husband and a life filled with hard work.  Bucky had never met Steve’s dad.  Steve never had, either.  He’d left with the 107th infantry in the fall of 1917 and came home the following spring, destroyed by mustard gas.  He’d barely survived long enough to see his son’s birth in the summer of 1918.  Steve’s mother had struggled to raise Steve alone since then.  It didn’t help that Steve’s health problems were substantial.  Money and medicine were scarce, and as badly off as Bucky’s family was, Steve’s was worse.  Bucky didn’t think people really understood what Steve’s mom endured for the sake of her ill son.  The lion’s share of Steve’s many respiratory issues came from her, but she never let her own weaknesses hamper her.  She put everything she had, everything she earned, everything worth anything into keeping Steve clothed and fed and as healthy and as happy as she could.  It wasn’t enough, and she knew it.  She always had this sad look in her blue eyes, sad and defeated.  Once she had been really pretty, but now she just seemed constantly worn and weary and alone.

When Steve brought Bucky home to meet her, her face had immediately brightened, and it wasn’t just because her little boy had been ecstatic to have finally found a friend.  She’d seen in Bucky something good and pure and noble, even if he was a little rough around the edges.  She saw strength and acceptance and kindness, and those were all things that Steve sorely needed.  He was so small and so weak and so abused by the other kids in their neighborhood.  He needed someone to play with him, to protect him from the cruel taunts and jeers of the bullies, someone to stand up for him.  He’d spent the first five years of his life alone and unwanted and battling his own little body.  Having a friend in Bucky was a ray of light, a blast of warmth in a desolate world, and she sensed right away that Bucky was everything her son needed.

And like everything else, she wanted to give Steve what he needed.

“You seem like a good boy, James.”

“Only ma calls me James, ma’am.  Everyone else calls me Bucky.”

She smiled thinly at that, but it didn’t reach her eyes.  “Steve doesn’t have any friends,” she admitted softly as if Bucky hadn’t known that.  She seemed ashamed, like that was her fault.  “I’m glad he’s found you.  Can you keep an eye on him?  Take care of him?”

Steve flushed with embarrassment, protesting and huffing.  Bucky tried to make light of it for Steve’s sake, but he was pretty proud that someone was asking him to do something this important.  “I can do that, Mrs. Rogers.” He grinned, glancing at his newfound friend.  “Scout’s honor,” he joked.

Bucky knew she tried.  Really, she tried.  At least with Bucky she didn’t have to try hard.  But that little apartment still always smelled like disease, clean enough but still too cluttered to be comfortable.  Even before the Depression struck, they were poor.  Blankets were old and musty and stayed that way no matter how many times she washed them.  Clothes were mended everywhere, knees and elbows worn through and made more of patches than the original fabric.  Food was thin broth and oatmeal and occasionally boiled cabbage and whatever else she could find.  Bucky’s family was poor, too, but they always had more than that.  Part of the reason Steve and his mother were so destitute was that she hoarded whatever small sum of money she could save because she never knew when Steve’s next asthma attack would come or if a little cough would quickly transform into a raging case of bronchitis.  Medicine was more important than meals.  She starved herself so Steve could eat more, even though she tried to hide it.  As they got older, Bucky couldn’t help but notice.

He often wondered if Steve noticed.  Despite what people thought about him, Steve was smart.  He probably did.  But it was just one of those things they never talked about.  Bucky’s mother talked about it, though, and talked about it often.  “You shouldn’t be over there so much,” she chastised him angrily.  “That Sarah’s nice enough, but she doesn’t look well.  She never looks well.  A woman shouldn’t be living alone, not like that.  And nothing will come of that son of hers.  He’s got no meat on his bones, and he’s not right in the head, so quiet and drawing all the time.  Being sick so much damages him, mark my words.  Sarah ought to be ashamed.  Really ought to.”  Bucky was inching toward the door of their own apartment during his mother’s tirade.  “I don’t like you over there in that sickness.  I don’t like it, James.”

“It’s nothing, Ma,” he said, fleeing before she could grab his ear and rope him into one of the many chores he’d left unfinished.  He ran across the way to Steve’s, trying to ignore her but smarting from what she said all the same.

Every time Bucky stepped into that tiny apartment with its stale air, Steve’s mother looked at him with a huge, relieved smile upon her bloodless lips as though she’d been deathly afraid he’d suddenly come to his senses and abandoned the burden he’d taken up.  When she saw he was as happy to be there, to be with Steve, as he always was, her relief was palpable.  She always had a hug for him.  And every time since that first time, she looked in his eyes and softly implored, “Take care of Steve.”  Every time.  When Bucky came to collect Steve before school.  When he came to take Steve down to the street to play.  When he arrived with some candy or a toy because Steve was too sick to go outside.  “Take care of Steve.  You’re all he has.”

So he did.  He’d always nod and grin and say, “Sure thing, Mrs. Rogers.”  He brushed aside her worry, cavalier with the power he had with an easy promise.  Still, even at his tender age, he’d known what she was asking of him.  She really didn’t have to remind him.  Steve was much more than anyone thought.  After that first day when Bucky had rescued him from a group of bullies harassing him, he’d come to realize more and more that Steve was all heart and courage trapped in a weak, frail body.  He stood up for anyone who needed it, no matter what it cost him.  He was funny in a wry, quiet sort of way.  He was too serious sometimes, but when Bucky got him going, he was as good a partner in mischief as anyone.  The other kids shunned Bucky for sticking up for their favorite whipping boy, but he didn’t care.  He and Steve were a team, two boys who didn’t have much but always had each other.  They ran around the neighborhood and played catch and dreamed atop the roof of the apartment building under a summer’s starlit sky and pretended they were soldiers winning a war and defending the innocent.  Steve helped Bucky with his reading and writing and arithmetic.  Bucky helped Steve whenever the bullies got to him, assuring him that they were idiots, slinging a comforting arm over his shoulder and buying him a soda pop to cheer him up.  Steve taught Bucky about honor and selflessness and integrity.  Bucky taught Steve about strength and confidence.  Steve showed Bucky how to be grateful.  Bucky showed Steve how to have fun.  Steve was the brains and Bucky was the brawns.  They complemented each other.  They were buddies.

And as he got older and wiser to how cruel the world could be, he took that promise that he made to Steve’s mother even more seriously.  When winter came and the days were cold and full of snow, he gave Steve his nicer coats and his nicer clothes, even though his own mother nearly boxed his ears for it.  He made sure Steve slept at his place during the worst of winter’s throes because, as chilly as it was, it was still warmer than Steve’s own apartment.  He shared his bed when the couch cushions on the hard floor didn’t cut it, holding Steve for warmth and comfort as the smaller boy coughed and shivered his way through another ailment.  He included Steve at every family meal, offering up his share of meat and potatoes and soup and bread if there wasn’t quite enough to go around.  This was what Steve’s mother had asked him to do, so he was going to do it as best he could.

A cold rain doused Brooklyn in chilly misery one October, and they walked home from school soaked and frozen to the bone.  Bucky was sick the next day, his head aching and his chest congested.  He fought it off easily enough.  When Steve wasn’t in school after that, he went to the tiny apartment and found Steve’s mother frantically trying to bring down the burning hell of Steve’s fever.  The small body, buried under every blanket and coat they owned, wracked and writhed with deep, hacking coughs that brought up blood.  His fever was so high that he wasn’t quite conscious, white and shivering and wheezing.  Steve’s mother fled in a frenzied rush to find a doctor, making Bucky promise to stay with Steve.  “Take care of him!” she pleaded, her cheeks streaked in wetness.  “Don’t leave him, not even for a second!”

“I won’t,” he swore.  He was terrified, alone with his suffering friend, and for the first time he realized how serious Steve’s health problems truly were.  A disease that had only slowed him down for a day or two could kill Steve.  Steve could die.  He sat there at the side of Steve’s mother’s bed, holding Steve’s hand, silently praying that his friend hang on.

The doctor came with medicine that Steve’s mother couldn’t afford.  Without being asked Bucky ran home and pleaded with his parents for help, help they begrudgingly gave him as a pile a rumpled dollars and coins.  He promised to pay it back.  While Steve was recovering from the pneumonia that had nearly claimed his life, still weak as a kitten and coughing for months afterward, Bucky worked and worked until every penny was returned.  He never told Steve what it had cost to save him.  It was worth it, but he knew Steve wouldn’t think so.  Steve didn’t like to be a burden.

He wasn’t.  But it took sacrifice to take care of him.

And Bucky became more and more invested in his task.  He had to be.  Steve’s mother was depending on him.  It wasn’t her fault that she had to, and Bucky didn’t mind.  It was an honor, really, this duty she’d bestowed upon him.  When Steve turned twelve, she had nothing to give him for his birthday.  Work was not easily found, and so money was tighter than ever.  Steve had taken to delivering papers, cleaning up at the local shops, doing anything and everything he could to help, but it still wasn’t enough.  Bucky was working, too, and he scraped and saved all winter to get enough money to buy two tickets to Ebbets Field.  He gave them to Steve on July 4th, and Steve’s eyes lit up brighter than any fireworks.  “You should take that gal you’re sweet on,” he said, shaking his head, uncomfortable with how much money and effort Bucky had used to get the tickets.

“Hell, no.  I’m taking you,” Bucky said, and he did.  They sat in the stands and ate hot dogs until they thought they would burst and choked in the cigar smoke until their eyes were tearing up and they could hardly see the field.  They walked home, euphoric and laughing from the good time they’d had, promising to find a way to do this every year.  The gratitude on his mother’s face when she met them at the door was overwhelming, and Bucky felt his heart swell with pride for what he’d done.

After all, Bucky took being Steve’s guardian very seriously.  Steve was the little brother he’d never had.  Steve needed help, but no matter what, Bucky never made him feel anything less than his friend.  An equal, even if Bucky was quickly growing to be twice as big and twice as fast and twice as strong.  An equal, even if Bucky could win anybody to his side with his charming smile and rakish good looks and Steve was a pale ghost to almost everybody.  An equal, even if all the girls fawned over Bucky and Steve couldn’t get a single dame to look his way once let alone twice.  Steve didn’t complain; he _never_ complained about anything.  Secretly Bucky didn’t know how he could stand it sometimes, being dealt this broken body that couldn’t do anything that he wanted it to do and this poor life filled with needs and wants and wishes that couldn’t be fulfilled.  It took him a while to realize that Steve just didn’t need and he didn’t want.  He was always satisfied with what he had.  But he did wish.  And he wished that he could be more so that he could really stand up to the people who brought him down.

That was when Steve started getting into fights a lot more than he used to.  He planted himself in the way of the bullies and bastards and monsters.  He got in between the bad men and their victims.  And he did it over and over again.  He was constantly battered, constantly bruised or bleeding, and Bucky wanted to hit him himself sometimes for being so damn stupid.  His mouth and heart were far too big for his body, but nobody, not the mean kids nor Bucky himself, could convince him of that.  But Bucky still protected him, although now it had become a balancing act between saving him from a world of hurt and letting him think he was doing what was right.  It _was_ right, but Steve didn’t need to constantly prove it.

He patched Steve up at his own apartment as much as possible because he didn’t want his mother to find out that Steve was getting beat up so much.  A couple of times he couldn’t, and she walked in to see Bucky wiping the blood from Steve’s banged up nose or helping him wrap up his sore ribs.  There was fear and disappointment in her eyes.  She wouldn’t come out and say it, but she was angry with him.  Bucky’s guilt was only amplified by that, by her worried look and silent admonishment, and he argued with Steve repeatedly about this insanity.

This was one of those times.  “You really can’t keep doing this,” Bucky said softly as he helped Steve limp home yet again.  Sure, the bastard at the corner stand had really had it coming for picking on a girl because she wouldn’t go out with him.  The guy was a downright _waste_ , not worth his weight in spit.  “Steve, you have to stop.”

Steve wiped at the blood dripping from his lips.  A hell of a bruise was blossoming on his cheek.  “He shouldn’t treat her like that,” he mumbled, staggering a bit.  Bucky knew there was going to be bruises all over his chest, mottled and angry and ugly.  Steve couldn’t afford that sort of thing with how bad off his lungs already were.  “It’s not right, Buck.”

“I don’t care!” he returned sharply.  “It’s not your job to make everything right.  You need to look out for yourself.”

“What kind of person would I be if I did that?  Nobody good.”

“There’s a difference between doing the right thing and trying to prove something.”

Steve saddled him with a hurt glare.  “Spoken like someone who’s never had anything to prove.”  The bitterness and anger in his low voice was so unlike him.

Bucky stopped and grabbed Steve by the shoulders and forced him to look at him.  “I _do_ have something to prove.  I’m your friend, and you’re worth more than some goddamn shield.  I don’t know what I have to do to prove that to you!”

Steve’s face softened at that.  “I can take the hits.”

“Steve, listen to yourself.  Come on.  You don’t have to be a hero to be a good guy.”  Steve looked hurt and disappointed.  To him, there was no distinction between a hero and a good guy.  And there was never a reason to not stand up for what was right.  Bucky knew the world wasn’t so simple.  He managed a sloppy grin.  “And believe it or not, I don’t enjoy scraping your sorry butt off the sidewalk.”

He said that without heat, but Steve still had the decency to look ashamed as if it hadn’t occurred to him before that him getting hurt hurt other people.  Maybe it hadn’t.  Steve was damn proficient at blinding himself to things that were starkly obvious.  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

Bucky’s heart felt heavy at his friend’s defeated and downcast expression.  Truth be known (and they both knew it), Bucky was the reason Steve _could_ keep getting up after taking those hits.  “Listen.  Just… don’t throw yourself in front of them so much, okay?  Now let’s get you cleaned up before your ma gets home.  What excuse we gonna use this time?”  They always lied about the scrapes and bruises, though Bucky didn’t know why.  Steve’s mom saw right through it.  He’d learned a long time ago that taking care of Steve meant living just a tiny bit in a fantasy world where things didn’t hurt so much if he just ignored them.

They didn’t beat Steve’s mother home.  When they got there, she was already there, and she wrapped Steve in her spindly arms and threaded her hands through his mussed hair and tucked his head to her shoulder.  She sent him to the wash room to clean up.  Then she regarded Bucky with teary, terrified eyes.  “You need to take care of him.  _Please._ ”

Bucky’s throat was so tight that all he could do was nod.

The apartment still smelled like sickness to him.  She never opened the windows now, afraid of the world, afraid of the cold and afraid of what it could do.  The smell bothered Bucky so much that he started doing everything in his power to keep Steve away.  It was a scent Bucky associated with weakness and fear and poverty and having one day but wanting the day after and _needing_ the day after that.  Steve’s mom had found steady work as a nurse in a TB ward.  She claimed the money was better, but she didn’t acknowledge that everything else was worse.  Long hours.  Strain on her already taxed body.  Disease all around her.  Steve told him about it over a bottle of warm, lousy beer Bucky had stolen from his dad one hot summer night.  They weren’t kids anymore (at least in their adolescent minds, they weren’t), so they were old enough and wise enough to share a moment of fearful silence.  And they were old enough to call their own shots.  Bucky silently vowed not to let Steve stay with his mother anymore.  She was already sick, and working in a place so infested with death and disease could only bring more of the same into their already strained lives.  She’d asked him to protect Steve, so she would have to understand.  He couldn’t let that sort of thing threaten Steve’s already precarious health.

So it was back to the couch cushions.  His parents weren’t thrilled since he really hadn’t asked their permission.  They liked Steve well enough, but they thought what everyone else thought: why in the world was someone as smart and strong and handsome as Bucky Barnes hanging around with someone as weak and pathetic and useless as Steve Rogers?  They didn’t understand the promise he’d made, that promise that drove him to sleeping on the floor night after night even though his back started to hurt something fierce.  They didn’t understand why he kept promising to be there for Steve.  They didn’t see that Steve made him better.  Were it not for their friendship, he was sure he would’ve been another useless punk, wasting his time on women and his money on liquor and his life on nothing worthwhile.  That frightened him.  Things were easier now, with more food and money, but Bucky still gave Steve the lion’s share of everything he had.  Steve started realizing what he was doing and turning it down.  And that hurt more than he thought it would.

Steve’s mother got sick.  Really sick.  Her long days and nights in the TB ward tending to the dying had finally taken its toll upon her, and one day she didn’t emerge from that awful place unscathed.  Steve came home after school to find her asleep in her bed, raging with fever and struggling for every breath, and he couldn’t wake her no matter how hard he tried.  He was the one who ran to get a doctor for her now, and still Bucky was left at the bedside.  “You… you need to take care of Steve,” she whispered, her face filled with agony.  She could hardly get the air into her lungs to speak, and she was wasting her breath and her strength on him.  Those dark eyes were deep blue and wild with panic and desperation, though not for her own life.  For her son’s life.  She was afraid for Steve.  “I – I don’t think I can anymore.”  He nodded, his heart pounding and the stench of death choking him.

The doctor came and labored to save her.  Steve wasn’t allowed anywhere near her; tuberculosis would most certainly kill him with his already compromised lungs and weak heart.  His pain and rage felt like a tangible force shaking the room as he paced Bucky’s apartment like a caged animal.  The sound of his shoes thudding on the floor over and over again became too much, and Bucky was up off his bed and pulling Steve into his arms.  He held him tight as Steve cried.  Despite everything they’d been through together, he’d never seen Steve cry before, at least not like this.  And it only seemed right that if Steve cried, he did, too.

She lived through the infection, but she was even more of a shadow of who she had been.  A ghost fading from life.  Steve moved back to that tiny apartment to take care of her.  She was too weak to do it for herself.  Bucky offered to come with him, but he politely declined.  After all the long years she had spent loving and nursing her son, he could do the same for her.  She might have survived, but she wasn’t going to get better.  This was the beginning of a slow and painful and sorrowful slide into the end.  But Steve never admitted the inevitability of it all, hoping for something that couldn’t be.  That was what he did.  And Bucky let him hope.

War was brewing across the ocean.  Evil was stirring.  They watched the situation degrade via huge, worried headlines splayed across newspapers.  They listened to the men around the neighborhood whisper about war, about Nazis and Hitler and Germany threatening the tenuous peace the world had found after the last great and bloody conflict.  Steve was listening more intently than Bucky was.  Steve who was trying to get into art school where he belonged, safe and drawing and doing what he loved.  Steve who could never be a soldier, no matter how badly he wanted it, no matter how desperately he felt he needed to fight.  Bucky didn’t know if he had the heart to tell him that.

“I gotta try, Buck,” Steve said.  “I have to try.”

“They haven’t even declared war,” Bucky answered.  They were walking home from the cinema where hushed gossip of distant battles and failing diplomacy ran rampant.  Their leisurely stroll was becoming more and more serious with each step.  “Don’t you think you should wait until they do?”

“They will,” Steve said with absolute confidence.  “They have to.”  He glanced at Bucky from the corner of his eye.  “You going?”

It was a difficult question to answer, even though the answer in and of itself was pretty simple.  “Are you?”

“Yes.”

“What about your mom?  She needs you.”  That quiet reminder gave Steve pause, and his face blanched slightly and lost its determined edge.  Bucky immediately regretted the pain and worry he saw in Steve’s eyes.  “Besides, you think they’re going to want you?” he said with a laugh.  He nudged Steve’s arm teasingly as they strolled along the darkened streets.  “The Germans will run in fear the minute they see you coming at them.”  He tried to be lighthearted about it, but something ached inside his chest.  It was the sinking acceptance of the distressing fact that this was going to be first of many conversations like this they were going to have.  Steve was so talented as an artist, smart and compassionate and a good man, but the only thing he wanted was to serve his country and protect freedom.  Other people thought that was crazy, but Bucky knew it was all too fitting.

“If you’re going, I’m going,” Steve answered resolutely.  “We stick together, right?”  Bucky couldn’t help but smile warmly at that.  “I gotta be there to keep you from doing anything stupid.”

“I’m not the stupid one,” Bucky clarified.  “I’m the one who keeps _you_ from doing the stupid stuff.  Somebody’s gotta take care of you, kid.”

He was starting to realize how much that role had defined him.

They were young men now, young men on the verge of a wild and dangerous future, and that small apartment reeked of sickness more than ever.  Bucky could hardly tolerate it.  He did, though, standing stiffly, rigidly, as Steve leaned over his mother’s bed and hushed her softly.  She’d taken a turn for the worst, and she wasn’t coming back.  They’d known it for weeks, not really talking about it like if they pretended it wasn’t true and looming over them, it wouldn’t happen.  Bucky had felt something tighten inside him every day he’d seen Steve gathering more supplies and medicine, struggling to work and keep up with art school and take care of his dying mother.  There were huge and dark bags under his eyes from lack of sleep and anguish was bending his body.  When Steve had shown up at his door after dinner one night with an unspoken plea upon his lips and frustrated tears pooling in his eyes, he’d come right away.  And now he just watched, that damn, miserable apartment shadowy and hot and closing in all about them.

Steve’s mom was lucid for this brief moment.  Her breath was a weak rattle from damaged and dying lungs.  But she was trying her hardest to seem strong and brave.  She was trying her hardest to seem like this was for the best for her son’s sake.  Always for her son’s sake.  Giving everything to Steve had taken so much strength that she’d never had any left for herself.  “You’ll be alright,” she whispered softly.

Steve smiled.  “Of course I will be,” he assured.

“My sweet boy.”  Her frail hand brushed Steve’s white cheek.  “I’m so proud of you.  Sweet, darling boy.”  The tears Steve had been fighting to hold back finally escaped.  She wiped them away and then closed her eyes.  Bucky’s heart throbbed and he felt so goddamn helpless.  He couldn’t protect Steve from this, and he knew it, and that _hurt_.  The night went on forever, a hell full of fever and coughing and fading life, not quite real but too harsh and raw to be anything but the truth.  Bucky sat and stood and paced and sat and stood.  Steve never moved, never broke his vigil even though he must have ached mightily from sitting there for so long.  He never even looked away.  Eventually, when the first light of dawn was creeping into the gray sky, Bucky convinced him to get some coffee for the both of them.  And then he took Steve’s place, settling into that old, rickety chair and watching over the dying woman.

And she asked.  Of course she would.  Even in her last moments, she wanted to give Steve what he needed.  She smiled through her pain, her face gaunt and ashen.  All vibrancy and vigor was gone from her eyes.  “You’ve been the best thing that’s ever happened to him.  Do you know that?  The best thing.  You’ve done more for him than I ever cold.”

“No, come on.  You shouldn’t talk…”

“He needs you.”  Bucky’s eyes stung and he swallowed thickly.  “Promise me, James,” she begged.  “Promise me you’ll be his friend.  Promise me you’ll always take care of him.”

He’d promised this so many times in the past.  But he would again.  For her sake.  “I promise,” he swore.  She nodded and gasped a weary sob, so very relieved.  He was glad to do this for her.  She was a good woman and a good mother.  She deserved peace.

She died an hour later.  Steve didn’t cry, his exhausted, red-rimmed eyes empty and hollow, staring at her body long after her last, halting breath had left her.  They’d folded her arms over her chest and cleaned the bed so that she looked as pretty as she could be.  And then they stood beside her.  Bucky laid his arm comfortingly around his friend’s narrow shoulders.  “She’s in a better place now,” Steve said.

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed.  Slowly he moved to the window that had been so tightly closed to keep the chill of the air out of the apartment.  He pulled the grungy pane wide open.  The sounds of the city, the smells of cooking breakfast and cigarette smoke and the crisp scent of spring, rushed inside.

Steve sighed slowly.  He rubbed at his eyes.  “I’ll be okay.”

Bucky came back and held Steve close to him.  “Of course you will be,” he said.  “You got me.  We stick together, right?  Remember what I told you when we met?  We don’t need anyone except each other.”

Steve didn’t smile, but he relaxed slightly and leaned into Bucky’s warm strength.  “I remember,” he whispered.

The sun was rising.  Together they watched it chase away the lingering shadow of death.  Bucky breathed deeply of air that was clean and fresh.  _Don’t worry, Mrs. Rogers,_ he thought. _I’ll always take care of him.  Scout’s honor._

* * *

The Winter Soldier was lost in his rage.  Lost in the fire.  Everything was cracking, _breaking_ , and things rushed from behind the once comforting curtain of blackness in his mind and blasted over him.  He was shaking and reeling and lost in it.  These things battered him, vicious and fast and relentless.  Memories.  He couldn’t watch.  He couldn’t remember.  No, he wouldn’t remember!

“You’re my mission!” he screamed, his fist flying, pounding, beating to death the man beneath him.  This man he knew. He _knew_ him.  That couldn’t be.  That couldn’t be true.  _“You’re my mission!”_

“Then finish it.”  The moan came from torn lips.  The man was barely awake, barely alive, his face littered with bruises and cuts and blood.  Blue eyes filled with agony opened to slits, watching him.  _Knowing_ him. “’Cause I’m with you… till the end of the line.”

The world shifted.  He had raised his fist to kill his target and complete the task to which he’d been assigned, but suddenly his muscles locked and his arm wouldn’t function and he _couldn’t do it_.  Then things jerked violently and without warning.  Glass and metal gave way, screeching and tearing, and the body he was straddling fell from beneath him.

The man tumbled down, down deep into the water below.  The river opened gray arms to him and swallowed him whole.

The Winter Soldier couldn’t breathe, dangling, staring emptily into the swirling mess of water and fire and wreckage.  Those things had come free from the shadows, and they weren’t going back.  They weren’t going back.  Wild and free and erratic, they flooded him and flooded him, washing away the pain and torture and training, until he could hardly stand it.  And when the storm abated, only one thing remained.  It drove him, if just for this moment. This one thing was all there was.

He’d promised someone something a long time ago.  He’d promised.  _He’d promised._

_Take care of Steve._

So he did.

**THE END**


End file.
